Chechen separatist and guerrilla leader who declared himself emir of the so-called Islamic Caucasus Emirate, which comprised areas within the southwestern Russian republics of Dagestan, Chechnya, Ingushetiya, North Ossetia–Alaniya, Kabardino-Balkariya, and Karachayevo-Cherkesiya....

The modern town originated about 1810, when Malam Usman, a Muslim preacher, assumed the leadership of Fulani herdsmen who had fled from Kajuru (75 miles [121 km] northwest) and founded the settlement of Jema’an-Darroro (“Followers of a Learned Man from Darroro”). He made Jemaa an emirate and a vassal state of the emir of Zaria. Although Usman (emir until 1833) and his son Musa (emir......

separate military service within the U.S. Department of the Navy, charged with the provision of marine troops for seizure and defense of advanced bases and with conducting operations on land and in the air incident to naval campaigns. It is also responsible for providing detachments for service aboard certain types of naval vessels, as well as security forces for naval shore ins...

major branch of the United States armed forces charged with the defense of the nation at sea, the seaborne support of the other U.S. military services, and the maintenance of security on the seas wherever the interests of the United States extend....

any member of the genus Usnea, a yellow or greenish fruticose (bushy, branched) lichen with long stems and disk-shaped holdfasts, which resembles a tangled mass of threads. It occurs in both the Arctic and the tropics, where it is eaten by wild animals or collected as fodder. In the past it was used as a remedy for whooping cough, catarrh, epilepsy, and dropsy. It has been used also as an ...

...eaten by wild animals or collected as fodder. In the past it was used as a remedy for whooping cough, catarrh, epilepsy, and dropsy. It has been used also as an astringent, a tonic, and a diuretic. Old-man’s-beard (U. barbata) was first described in 300 bc as a hair-growth stimulant. Hanging moss (U. longissima) looks like gray threads about 1.5 m (5 feet) long hangi...

...cough, catarrh, epilepsy, and dropsy. It has been used also as an astringent, a tonic, and a diuretic. Old-man’s-beard (U. barbata) was first described in 300 bc as a hair-growth stimulant. Hanging moss (U. longissima) looks like gray threads about 1.5 m (5 feet) long hanging from tree branches in humid, mountainous regions. Some species of Usnea also produce ...

popular Buddhist goddess in Nepal, Tibet, and Mongolia. Her name in Sanskrit means “victorious goddess of the uṣṇīṣa,” the last-named object being the protuberance on the top of the Buddha’s skull. She wears an image of the Buddha Vairocana in her headdress and is described as residing in the cellar of the caitya (“shrine”).......

popular Buddhist goddess in Nepal, Tibet, and Mongolia. Her name in Sanskrit means “victorious goddess of the uṣṇīṣa,” the last-named object being the protuberance on the top of the Buddha’s skull. She wears an image of the Buddha Vairocana in her headdress and is described as residing in the cellar of the caitya (“shrine”). She may be identified by the small figure of Buddha seated ...

in Washington, D.C., an official source, with the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST; formerly the National Bureau of Standards), for standard time in the United States. The positional measurement of celestial objects for purposes of timekeeping and navigation has been the main work of the observatory since its beginni...

...Sindical de Comisiones Obreras; CC.OO.), which is affiliated with the Communist Party and is also structured by sectional and territorial divisions. Other unions include the Workers’ Syndical Union (Unión Sindical Obrera; USO), which has a strong Roman Catholic orientation; the Independent Syndicate of Civil Servants (Confederación Sindical Independiente de Funcionarios); the......

city, Irkutsk oblast (region), east-central Russia. It lies along the Angara River and the Trans-Siberian Railroad. The city is an old centre of salt production that continues as a major producer of caustic soda. Other plants produce machinery and synthetic rubber. A health resort is nearby. Pop. (2006 est.) 86,901....

city, Irkutsk oblast (region), east-central Russia. It lies along the Angara River and the Trans-Siberian Railroad. The city is an old centre of salt production that continues as a major producer of caustic soda. Other plants produce machinery and synthetic rubber. A health resort is nearby. Pop. (2006 est.) 86,901....

city, Irkutsk oblast (region), east-central Russia. It lies along the Angara River and the Trans-Siberian Railroad. The city is an old centre of salt production that continues as a major producer of caustic soda. Other plants produce machinery and synthetic rubber. A health resort is nearby. Pop. (2006 est.) 86,901....

...consequences of social conditions in Franco society on individuals. She also documented these conditions in essays such as Usos amorosos de la postguerra española (1987; Courtship Customs in Postwar Spain), which describes the ideological indoctrination to which the Falange subjected girls and young women. Although he published his first novel in 1943, Gonzalo......

By a large margin most institutions of higher education are located in the south and southeast; however, the Federal District and each of the states has at least one university. The University of São Paulo is the largest and most important state university. The largest private university is Paulista University, also located in São Paulo....

...War I, the SPD played a central role in the formation of the Weimar Republic and in its brief and tragic history. In the general election of 1919 the SPD received 37.9 percent of the vote (while the Independent Social Democrats received another 7.6 percent), but the party’s failure to win favourable terms from the Allies at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 (terms embodied in the Treaty of......

...These and the other churches in the Kremlin ceased functioning as places of worship after the Russian Revolution of 1917, but services recommenced in most Kremlin churches beginning in 1990. The Cathedral of the Assumption is the oldest, built of white stone in 1475–79 in the Italianate-Byzantine style. Its pure, simple, and beautifully proportioned lines and elegant arches are crowned......

...would be spared, such as military troop pay, Social Security, and Medicaid. In addition, agencies that did not rely on Congress to approve the purse strings remained unaffected, including the U.S. Postal Service and Amtrak. However, large parts of the government had no such protection....

Among Portuguese moralists and theologians writing during the 16th century are several masterly prose stylists: Samuel Usque with his Consolaçam às tribulaçõens de Israel (1553; “Consolation for the Tribulations of Israel”), a pastoral dialogue on the sufferings of the Jewish people; Heitor Pinto with his Imagem da vida......

attack by Muslim militants associated with the organization al-Qaeda against a U.S. naval destroyer, the USS Cole, on Oct. 12, 2000. Suicide bombers in a small boat steered their craft into the side of the USS Cole, which was preparing to refuel in the harbour in the Yemeni port of Aden; the blast ripped a 1,600-square-foot (150-square-metre) hole in its hull and left 17 sailors......

attack by Muslim militants associated with the organization al-Qaeda against a U.S. naval destroyer, the USS Cole, on Oct. 12, 2000. Suicide bombers in a small boat steered their craft into the side of the USS Cole, which was preparing to refuel in the harbour in the Yemeni port of Aden; the blast ripped a 1,600-square-foot (15...

U.S. Navy heavy cruiser that was sunk by a Japanese submarine on July 30, 1945, shortly after delivering the internal components of the atomic bombs that were later dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. Up to 900 men initially survived the sinking, but many succumbed to shark attac...

...environment maintained by membranes in cells differs from the external environment and permits cellular function. The Danish physiologist August Krogh laid the groundwork in this subject; his pupil, Hans Ussing, developed the conceptual means by which the transport of ions (charged atoms) across membranes can be identified. Ussing’s definition of active transport made possible an understanding,...

...classifications also recognize several Eurasian subspecies, including the European moose (A. alces alces); the Siberian, or Yakut, moose (A. alces pfizenmayeri); the west Siberian, or Ussuri, moose (A. alces cameloides); and the east Siberian, or Kolyma, moose (A. alces buturlini). In addition to differences in geographical......

member of the dog family (Canidae) native to eastern Asia and introduced into Europe. Some authorities place it in the raccoon family, Procyonidae. It resembles the raccoon in having dark facial markings that contrast with its yellowish brown coat, but it does not have a ringed tail. It has short, brown or blackish limbs, a heavy body, and rounded ears. Head and body length is 5...

...males of the smallest forms, the southern sikas, stand 80–86 cm (31–34 inches) at the shoulder and weigh about 80 kg (180 pounds). Males of the largest forms, the northern sikas, such as Dybowski’s sika (C. nippon hortulorum), stand approximately 110 cm (40 inches) at the shoulder and weigh 110 kg (240 pounds). Females weigh about 60 percent as much as males. Their coats are......

city, Primorsky kray (territory), far eastern Russia. It lies about 50 miles (80 km) north of Vladivostok along the Trans-Siberian Railroad at the junction with a line to Harbin in Heilongjiang province, China. Founded as the village of Nikolskoye in 1866, it became a city in 1897 and was renamed ...

city, Primorsky kray (territory), far eastern Russia. It lies about 50 miles (80 km) north of Vladivostok along the Trans-Siberian Railroad at the junction with a line to Harbin in Heilongjiang province, China. Founded as the village of Nikolskoye in 1866, it became a city in 1897 and was renamed ...

city and administrative centre of the republic of Khakassia, south-central Russia. The city lies on the left bank of the Abakan River near its confluence with the Yenisey River. The starting point of a southern Siberian railway line (opened in 1960), Abakan is connected with Novokuznetsk and thence to Barnaul...

city and administrative centre of Ust-Ilimsk raion (sector), Irkutsk oblast (region), south-central Russia. It became a city in 1973 in connection with the building of the nearby Ust-Ilimsk dam and hydroelectric-power station on the Angara River. A huge timber-processing complex was constructed there in the early 1980s. Pop. (2...

city, capital of Shygys Qazaqstan oblysy (region), eastern Kazakhstan. It lies in the foothills of the Rūdnyy Altai Mountains and at the junction of the Ulba and Irtysh (Ertis) rivers. Founded as a Russian fort in 1720, it later became a centre of trade with Mongolia and China...

township and capital of the former Ust-Ordyn Buryat autonomous okrug (district), now merged with Irkutsk oblast (region), eastern Siberia, Russia. It lies on the Kuda River and on the road from Irkutsk to Kachug, west of Lake Baikal...

township and capital of the former Ust-Ordyn Buryat autonomous okrug (district), now merged with Irkutsk oblast (region), eastern Siberia, Russia. It lies on the Kuda River and on the road from Irkutsk to Kachug, west of Lake Baikal...

township and capital of the former Ust-Ordyn Buryat autonomous okrug (district), now merged with Irkutsk oblast (region), eastern Siberia, Russia. It lies on the Kuda River and on the road from Irkutsk to Kachug, west of Lake Baikal...

city and capital of Komi republic, northwestern Russia. It lies at the confluence of the Vychegda and Sysola rivers. It was founded in 1586 as Ust-Sysolsk and was made a city in 1780, but its remoteness hindered growth, and in fact it was used as a place of exile. In the 1960s a large timber-processing plant was built on Syktyvkar’s northern...

...in the United States and frequent doubts about the rules led to the foundation in 1881 of the U.S. National Lawn Tennis Association, later renamed the U.S. Lawn Tennis Association and, in 1975, the U.S. Tennis Association (USTA). Under its auspices, the first official U.S. national championship, played under English rules, was held in 1881 at the Newport Casino, Newport, Rhode Island. The......

...that were essential to the development of Urdu poetry (and also unique to the Urdu milieu in the medieval period) and that still exist in modified forms. First, Urdu poets generally chose an ustād, or master, just as a Ṣūfī novice chose a murshid, or preceptor, and one’s poetic genealogy was always a matter of much pride. Second, poets read poetry in......

a leading member of the 17th-century Jahāngīr studio of Mughal painters, famed for his animal and bird studies. The emperor Jahāngīr honoured him with the title Nādir al-ʿAsr (“Wonder of the Age”), and in his memoirs Jahāngīr praises Manṣūr as “unique in his generation” in the art of drawing. Manṣūr was primarily a natural history painter wh...

Croatian fascist movement that nominally ruled the Independent State of Croatia during World War II. In 1929, when King Alexander I tried to suppress the conflict between Croatian and Serbian political parties by imposing a personal dictatorial regime in Yugoslavia, Ante Pavelić, a former delegate to Parliament and an advocate of Croatian se...

Croatian fascist movement that nominally ruled the Independent State of Croatia during World War II. In 1929, when King Alexander I tried to suppress the conflict between Croatian and Serbian political parties by imposing a personal dictatorial regime in Yugoslavia, Ante Pavelić, a former delegate to Parliament and an advocate of Croatian se...

Croatian fascist movement that nominally ruled the Independent State of Croatia during World War II. In 1929, when King Alexander I tried to suppress the conflict between Croatian and Serbian political parties by imposing a personal dictatorial regime in Yugoslavia, Ante Pavelić, a former delegate to Parliament and an advocate of Croatian se...

city, northwestern Czech Republic. It is a port on the left (west) bank of the Elbe (Labe) River at the latter’s confluence with the Bílina River. Although dating from the 10th century, the city has developed mainly since the 19th century and has been largely reconstructed since World War II. Its western outskirts mark the limit of the north Bohemian coal basin. The growth of li...

disease of plants caused by the fungus Ustilago maydis, which attacks corn (maize) plants, affecting any aboveground part. The early signs of an attack are whitish galls that later rupture to release dark spores capable of infecting other corn plants. Affected plants are often distorted. The disease is most vigorous in warm weather. Spores overwinter in soil and in corn litter and then......

city and capital of Udmurtiya, in west-central Russia, lying along the Izh River. Izhevsk was founded in 1760 as a centre of ironworking and later of armaments, and the city remains a major producer of steel, armaments, machine tools, building machinery, and motorcycles. There is also a large automobile plant. Izhevsk’s other industries include large-scale saw...

plateau in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, lying between the Aral Sea and the Amu Darya (river) delta in the east and the Mangyshlak (Tupqarghan) Plateau and the Kara-Bogaz-Gol (Garabogazköl; an inlet of the Caspian Sea) in the west. It has an area of about 77,000 square miles (about 200,000 square km) and an average elevation of about 500 feet (about 150 m), rising to a maximum of 1,200 feet (365 m) i...

plateau in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, lying between the Aral Sea and the Amu Darya (river) delta in the east and the Mangyshlak (Tupqarghan) Plateau and the Kara-Bogaz-Gol (Garabogazköl; an inlet of the Caspian Sea) in the west. It has an area of about 77,000 square miles (about 200,000 square km) and an average elevation of about 500 feet (about 150 m), rising to a maximum of 1,200 feet (365 m) i...

...for the payment of large sums; the small silver coins of varying size and quality were melted and cast into lumps on which were stamped the weight and purity of the silver. These coins were called Usualmarks....

Usucapio referred to ownership acquired by length of possession. In early Roman law, two years of continuous possession established title in the case of land, one year in the case of movables. In the developed law, possession must have begun justifiably in good faith, and the thing must not have been stolen (even though the possessor himself may have been innocent of the theft) or......

in Roman-based legal systems, the temporary right to the use and enjoyment of the property of another, without changing the character of the property. This legal concept developed in Roman law and found significant application in the determination of the property interests between a slave held under a usus fructus (Latin: “use and enjoyment”) bond and a temporary master. Any property acqui...

...is smoothed by burnishing. The second method involves gluing the shell onto the ground coating, applying a mixture of clay powder and raw lacquer (sabi), and burnishing the surface. In usugai-hō, a technique using thin shell, shell pieces are cut into designs by means of a knife or needle and are glued on after the surface has been given two coatings of lacquer. A third......

city, Ōita ken (prefecture), Kyushu, Japan. The city faces Usuki Bay on the Bungo Channel between the Inland Sea and the Pacific Ocean. An early castle town, Usuki once carried on trade with Portugal. It is now a fishing port and commercial centre; the main industrial activity is brewing. Usuki is perhaps most noted as the site of the former Buddhist Ma...

in classical Islāmic theory, the four major sources from which law is derived: the Qurʾān; the sunna, or sunnah (practice of the Prophet as transmitted through his sayings); ijmāʿ (consensus of scholars); and qiyas (analogical deductions from these three). The uṣūl, systematized under ash-Shāfiʿī (767–820), were the result of an Islāmization of law that began about the 2nd ce...

Early in the 20th century, Tajiks in those Central Asian communities where the Jadid reformist movement had installed its New Method schools received the rudiments of a modern, though still Muslim, education. The educational establishment was dominated until the 1920s, however, by the standard network of Muslim maktabs and madrasahs. Soviet efforts eventually brought secular......

...was the direct teachings of the 12 infallible imams, in the form of their written and oral testaments (akhbār). Their opponents, known as the Uṣūliyyah, held that a number of fundamental sources (uṣūl) should be consulted but that the final source for legal conclusions......

city, southeastern El Salvador. It lies on the Pacific coastal plain at the southern foot of Usulután Volcano. The city’s name, which is Indian, means “city of the ocelots.” Usulután is a commercial centre dealing in the grain, coffee, sugarcane, fruit, and hardwood lumber produced in the adjacent hinterland. The city has only small industrial developments. Pop. (2005 est.) urba...

river in southeastern Mexico and northwestern Guatemala, formed by the junction of the Pasión River, which arises in the Sierra de Santa Cruz (in Guatemala), and the Chixoy River, which descends from the Sierra Madre de Guatemala....

...Civil War (1936–39), and when the Spanish Republic fell in 1939 he went to Argentina, where he taught and published a sociology textbook. In 1949 he published a book of short stories, Los usurpadores (“The Usurpers”), in which he examines the innate immorality of one person subjugating another to his will. This theme is treated in the context of the history of......

in modern law, the practice of charging an illegal rate of interest for the loan of money. In Old English law, the taking of any compensation whatsoever was termed usury. With the expansion of trade in the 13th century, however, the demand for credit increased, necessitating a modification in the definition of the term. Us...

...right to use and take the fruits (such as crops) of a thing and corresponded to the modern notion of life interest. A more restricted right, likewise not extending beyond the life of the holder, usus permitted merely the use of a thing; thus, a person could live in a house but could not let it, as that would be equivalent to “taking the fruits.”...

...It was usually reserved for patrician families. Coemptio, used by many plebeians, was effectively marriage by purchase, while usus, the most informal variety, was marriage simply by mutual consent and evidence of extended cohabitation. Roman law generally placed the woman under the control of her husband and on......

...also servitudes, in which one person enjoyed certain rights in property owned by another. Rights of way and water rights were rustic servitudes; rights to light or to view were urban servitudes. Ususfructus was the right to use and take the fruits (such as crops) of a thing and corresponded to the modern notion of life interest. A more restricted right, likewise not extending beyond the....

...Natal, and in the early 1850s he was involved in fighting between the Zulu and the Swazi for control of the Pongola region. By the mid-1850s Cetshwayo was head of a young Zulu group known as the Usuthu. During a Zulu civil war in 1856, Cetshwayo’s Usuthu force defeated his rival and brother Mbuyazwe’s Gqoza group in a violent encounter at the Battle of Ndondakasuka (near the lower Tugela......

river formed by the confluence in southwestern Mozambique of the Great Usutu River (flowing from Swaziland) and the Pongola River (flowing from South Africa). From the confluence it flows about 50 miles (80 km) northeastward to enter Delagoa Bay, 14 miles (23 km) south-southeast of the city of Maputo. It is navigable along its entire course....

...York City in 1922. The United States Volleyball Association (USVBA) was formed in 1928 and recognized as the rules-making, governing body in the United States. From 1928 the USVBA—now known as USA Volleyball (USAV)—has conducted annual national men’s and senior men’s (age 35 and older) volleyball championships, except during 1944 and 1945. Its women’s division was started in 1949,......

American labour union representing workers in metallurgical industries as well as in healthcare and other service industries. The union grew out of an agreement reached in 1936 between the newly formed Committee for Industrial Organization (CIO; later the Congress of Industrial Organizations) and the Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel, and Tin Wor...

...al-anbiyāʾ), that he was endowed with the most exalted character, and that God had placed him as the “goodly model” (uswah ḥasanah) for Muslims to follow. The Qurʾān is, in fact, the richest source for the understanding of Muhammad’s nature and mission....

American association football (soccer) player who was one of the sport’s leading forwards. She helped the U.S. Women’s National Team (USWNT) win two Olympic gold medals (2004 and 2012) and a World Cup (2015). In 2012 she was named Women’s Player of the Year by the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA)....

former American holding company that was incorporated in 1986 to oversee the operations formerly directed by the United States Steel Corporation. Its four independent operating units were USS (United States Steel Corporation), Marathon Oil, Texas Oil & Gas, and U.S. Diversified Group. After separating the businesses of U.S. Stee...

the mean solar time of the Greenwich meridian (0° longitude). Universal Time replaced the designation Greenwich Mean Time in 1928; it is now used to denote the solar time when an accuracy of about one second suffices. In 1955 the International Astronomical Union defined several categories of Universal Time of successively ...

...IV after seven years’ imprisonment, he never fully regained his health. The success of his early Plattdeutsch poems and stories led him to attempt more ambitious works in his native dialect. Ut de Franzosentid (1859; “During the Time of the French Conquest”) presents, with a mixture of seriousness and humour, life in a Mecklenburg country town during the War of Liberation......

...(1859; “During the Time of the French Conquest”) presents, with a mixture of seriousness and humour, life in a Mecklenburg country town during the War of Liberation against Napoleon. Ut mine Festungstid (1862; “During the Time of My Incarceration”) is an account of his last few years in prison told without bitterness. Ut mine Stromtid (1862–64;......

...the War of Liberation against Napoleon. Ut mine Festungstid (1862; “During the Time of My Incarceration”) is an account of his last few years in prison told without bitterness. Ut mine Stromtid (1862–64; “During My Apprenticeship”) is considered his masterpiece. In this work, originally issued in three volumes, Reuter’s resemblance to Charles Dickens......

Guido is also credited with the composition of a hymn to St. John the Baptist, Ut queant laxis, in which the first syllable of each line falls on a different tone of the hexachord (the first six tones of the major scale); these syllables, ut, re, mi, fa, sol, and......

...melody used in one voice part) as the tenor is found in such masses as Ecce sacerdos magnus; L’Homme armé; Ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la; Ave Maria; Tu es Petrus; and Veni Creator Spiritus. These titles refer to the source of the......

John Paul’s highly personalized encyclical Ut unum sint (1995; “That They May Be One”) reviewed 30 years of ecumenical relations, including his visits—the first by any pope—to Canterbury Cathedral and to Lutheran churches in Germany and Sweden. Its invitation to non-Catholic churches to join John Paul in rethinking the role of the papacy in......

genus of New World lizards of the family Iguanidae. At least nine species of side-blotched lizards occur in the southwestern United States and adjacent regions of Mexico. The common side-blotched lizard, or ground uta (Uta stansburiana), is widespread in the western United States. Uta species range in length from 10 to 27 cm (4 to 11 inches). They are usually dull-coloured; ...

These “diaries” are closely related in content and form to the uta monogatari (“poem tales”) that emerged as a literary genre later in the 10th century. Ise monogatari (c. 980; Tales of Ise) consists of 143 episodes, each containing one or more poems and an explanation in......

genus of New World lizards of the family Iguanidae. At least nine species of side-blotched lizards occur in the southwestern United States and adjacent regions of Mexico. The common side-blotched lizard, or ground uta (Uta stansburiana), is widespread in the western United States. Uta species range in length from 10 to 27 cm (4 to 11 inches). They are usually......

Jan. 20, 1917Tokyo, JapanMarch 31, 2001TokyoJapanese actor who , was regarded as the preeminent performer of Japan’s traditional kabuki theatre during his lifetime. Born into a family of kabuki actors, Utaemon VI made his theatrical debut in 1921. He specialized in onnagata (female) ...